Urban Caucus Joins Labor Demonstration During Los Angeles Meeting
Episcopal News Service. February 15, 2002 [2002-043]
Pat McCaughan, Senior Correspondent for The Episcopal News, the newspaper of the Diocese of Lso Angeles
(ENS) Taking to the streets in protest over the firing of 240 local hotel workers, about 200 Episcopal laity and clergy, in Los Angeles for the 22nd annual meeting of the national Episcopal Urban Caucus, joined a February 8 demonstration outside the Radisson Airport Hotel.
They joined the fired workers, union and religious activists on the picket line, singing Spanish and English protest songs and carrying signs naming the places from which they'd come and to which they would return, to share the story of the workers' plight. The signs read: Sleepy Hollow, New York; Jackson, Mississippi; Vancouver; Compton; Franklin, Tennessee; Indianapolis; Atlanta; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Newark; Tacoma; Hawaii; Delaware.
"We want justice," said Clemente Calloway, a union activist and Hyatt Hotel employee. "We want equality. We want to live as decent human beings. Injustice is the owner of a new hotel firing 240 employees, using unfair practices,"said Calloway, a grandson of famed musician Cab Calloway. "If it takes us every day of the year, being here in front of this hotel, we're going to do it," he said.
The fired workers from Local 11 of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees have picketed the Radisson since its purchase last year by Pacifica Host, which refused to honor union contracts, leaving hundreds without jobs or benefits.
"We need your support," said Maria Mendez, a fired employee whose two children were also on the picket line. She felt energized by the solidarity and vowed to continue efforts to be rehired, adding: "We know we will win in the end."
Losing our arrogance
A highlight of the four-day conference included a fiesta dinner honoring the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, suffragan bishop of Massachusetts, whose 1989 consecration made her the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion. Harris has announced plans to retire in November.
The Rev. James Lawson, retired Los Angeles area pastor and president of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, who organized the protest, addressed the caucus' theme, "The Diverse and Multicultural Mission of the Church." Lawson said church leaders must re-people churches, disciple people, and rediscover Jesus and the Gospel in new ways beyond creedal stances.
"The largest growing congregation in the United States is the congregation of people who want nothing to do with organized religion," Lawson told the gathering. "Maybe we in the Christian world need to lose our arrogance that Jesus is the only way," he said. "Again and again, Jesus says to people: 'Go, your faith has made you whole. Jesus is talking about something in that person ... that God has planted in them -- apart from the way we want to bring them into the church. If God is a God of unconditional grace and love, there is more than one way to access God," he said.
Caucus events also included: a youth-organized plenary and dialogue; a panel on multicultural ministry during which Luis Garibay, a custodian at the Diocese of Los Angeles, described the way the church helped him change from gang-banger to reliable family man.
Hands around the lake
At an early morning Episcopal Network for Economic Justice-sponsored breakfast, the Gloria Brown Award was bestowed upon Atlanta area-based Chattahoochee Valley Episcopal Ministry, for its efforts on behalf of the community. Gloria Brown was a Los Angeles-area Episcopalian whose efforts led to the establishment of the Episcopal Federal Credit Union, which assists low-income people and the community.
Caucus-goers also attended the lakeside seating of Los Angeles' sixth bishop, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, at Echo Park near the Cathedral Center. Bruno, joined by L.A. Police Chief Bernard Parks and City Councilman Eric Garcetti, unveiled initiatives to prevent violence and promote reconciliation. Afterwards, over a thousand people linked hands around the lake, as a witness against violence.
Caucus board members appointed to new terms were: Bishop William Persell of Chicago; the Rev. Charles Lane of Waterloo, Iowa; and lay leaders, Dale Rucker, Ohio; Ralph Sibley, Buffalo; Maggie Alston Claud of Hartford, Connecticut; and Robert Graham of Washington, D.C., and youth member Matthew Brunner, also of Buffalo.
The caucus formed in 1980 in response to national hearings that determined that the church’s agenda was to stand with minorities and the poor. This annual assembly of lay people, bishops and clergy led to development of the Jubilee Ministry and anti-racism training meets in Chicago in 2003.